The Archbishop of York has said that Nigel Farage’s plans to deport 600,000 migrants if his Reform party involves power will only make the issue worse.
Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, who’s interim head of the Church of England, aired his views on the plans in an interview with Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips.
He told Phillips that he had “every sympathy” with people who find themselves concerned about illegal immigration but said that mass deportation was not a long-term solution.
Phillips asked the Archbishop: “What’s your response to the people who find themselves saying the policy must be ‘you land here, unlawfully, you get locked up and also you get deported immediately. No ifs, no buts’?”
Cottrell said his response could be that “you have not solved the issue”.
“You’ve just put it elsewhere and you’ve got done nothing to handle the problem of what brings people to this country,” he said.
“And so in the event you think that is the answer, you’ll discover sooner or later that each one you’ve gotten done is made the issue worse.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I actually have every sympathy with those that find this difficult, every sympathy – as I do with those living in poverty.
“But … we must always actively resist the form of isolationist, short term knee-jerk ‘send them home’.”
Farage said at a news conference last week that he thought church leaders were “out of touch” on immigration.
Farage said, “I feel over the past a long time, quite a number of of [the Christian leaders] have been reasonably out of touch, perhaps with their very own flock, given the sorts of people appointed to be the Archbishop of Canterbury; that’s probably the largest understatement of the day.”
He added, “We imagine that what we’re offering is true and proper, and we imagine for a political party that was founded across the slogan of family, community, country, that we’re doing right by all of those things with these plans we recommend today.”
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